World Book Day should be for one and all

The annual event, World Book Day, is coming up on March 1st. It is usually associated with children's books, those little vouchers you get given as a kid and dressing up as your favourite character from a book. As the World Book Day's website explains the day is a chance to get children and young adults reading.

Now, undeniable, this is a good idea. I vividly remember one year dressing up as Mary Lennox, the little girl from the Secret Garden. We photocopied my Grampy's dramatic front door key and I carried around a plush robin all day at school. My costume only lost out to a girl dressed as Mary Poppins, whose family made costumes for a living and happened to have a Mary Poppinsesque carpet bag. 

I also enjoyed the opportunity to get more books and to read more, but being somebody who already loved reading not much was needed to convince me. I mean one of my ambitions in life is to have a library room in a house - although made out to be cool and homely of course.

However, there are also a great number of adults who just don't read as well. Not because they can't but because finding the time to sit down and enjoy the written word seems hard to do. But we should. Through a book you get to live vicariously through other people, learn about things and people you never would in normal life or just enjoy yourself. 

If it is important to children then it is important to adults too and it would be sad to miss out on a simple pleasure in life.

Photo: jonathanpberger via Flickr